September 26, 2006 12:44 pm

Former longtime Kansas City Star reporter Jonathan Rand has an interesting story about the new NFL commissioner’s concerns about noisy stadiums. West Coast teams might wonder whether crowd noise would be one of the commissioner’s concerns if, say, the Cardinals had experienced problems with noise at the Meadowlands.

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Gregg Bell joined The News Tribune in July 2014. Bell had been the director of writing for the University of Washington's athletic department for four years. He was the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press from 2005-10, covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season and beyond. He's also been The Sacramento Bee's beat writer on the Oakland Athletics and Raiders. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and a 2000 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

this is ridiculous. It makes me question Goodell’s (spelling?) knowledge of the game. if the lineman and WR’s and RB’s had headphones in there helmets all they would here is the QB’s barking the cadence. Or does the commisioner want the Qb to talk a little softer so they can execute there gameplan better?

what a joke. I hope someone with a lot of clout nationally exposes how ridiculous this is. I would nominate you Mike but i dont think they would listen to anyone from Seattle, or Tacoma for that matter.

If the noise is bad, then perhaps all the anxiety from thousands of people watching is too much. Maybe we should play all the games at a neutral site, and show them on video screens in the stadium. And while we’re removing any potential non-player-originating confounds, we’ll need to ban wind (indeed all weather), local media, jersey color, emotional momentum, half-time field goal kicking contests, moon phases and referees.

Having made some trips for away games in Fedex Field, the Meadowlands, Baltimore – there are certain rules that are broken consistently! I have noticed the stadium boards all getting the fans riled up by saying “get louder” – “bring the noise” etc! also they seem to allow the fans over there to bring in horns, cowbells etc. That said the fans are loud and generally pretty obnoxious but they never get to the same “all in” loud that Seahawks Stadium seems to generate.
Home field advantage should be just that. How else would it be home field – outside of not driving that far for work. Take the fans away and its just another stadium. And if thats the case and I can’t impact the game in the extremely little way we do than I probably would just stay at home and watch it on Hi-Def…

This whole topic is a bunch of rubbish. The noise level is part of the conditions of the field. I noticed on Sunday that about half way through the game, the sun wasn’t shining on the Seahawks side, but was still bright and hot on the Giants. How unfair. I’ve noticed snow in Denver, Green Bay and New England in the winter, and heat and humidity in Jacksonville and Miami. I also noticed that there was less crowd noise a few years ago when 1/3 of the fans at Qwest field (Seahawks Stadium at the time) were rooting for the other team.

We’re winning now, and our stadium is loud. It’s a good thing we don’t have a home game for a while, I need to get my voice back.

It’s loud here, and it rains here, and the sun shines more on the visiter’s side than on the home team. Sometimes you can hear a train, sometimes a plane flies overheard. Maybe you might even hear a ferry’s foghorn. It’s part of the local football environment.

In Denver when the opposing QB throws an incomplete, the fans chant “IN-COM-PLETE”. In Seattle, we yell like heck any time the other team has the ball. It’s part of the Seahawk tradition.

What next, are we going to give the guys umbrelles for the rain? Windshield wipers on their visors? Maybe some diapers would be more appropriate. They’re playing football here. It’s a contact sport. They are supposed to be tough guys out there.

If you want to watch someone tiptoe through the pansies to the sounds of chirping birds, I suggest you go somewhere other than Qwest field.

Like all the comments above I believe this is ridiculous. Unenhanced crowd noise is the home team’s advantage. Directing speakers at the visiting team’s bench is just plain oily. Perhaps I am naive, but I have always been a Hawk fan because my Hawks play “clean” football. Unlike the Raiders, who pride themselves on playing dirty, the Seattle Seahawks got to this point on pure talent and drive. So bring on these ridiculous rules when bad officiating doesn’t work, who cares! Paul Allen and Mike Holmgren have put together a TEAM that is for REAL!

As all Hawks fans that date back to the 80s can recall, there’s been a rule on the books for quite awhile that gives NFL refs the ability to penalize a team for crowd noise. This issue has nothing to do with Goodell. In the NYT article, Goodell simply discussed using wireless technology in helmets so that players could communicate better. What’s wrong with that?

Good thing that new NFL Commissioner (Roger Goodell) is spending time sorting out the noise issue when the NFL things like HGH, drug use, domestic violence, violence, players being shot by the police, T.O. and possible suicides, et. al., as big non issues on Goodell’s calendar … seems like Roger is well on his way to becoming the worst commissioner in NFL history.

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